


Stay

by Bhelryss



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, For the most part, Other, i tried practicing nsfw writing and chickened out and went around it, lissa and chrom appear at the beginning, phila is very dead but also a very present part of their ot3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 14:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: Emmeryn and Frederick are not the same without Phila. Emmeryn is not the same as she was.But, they still have each other.





	Stay

Emmeryn does not sleep alone, those first few weeks after Chrom and Lissa and Frederick take her home from that place. Chrom is in her tent, Lissa, Frederick, too. They keep an eye on her, as her faulty memory heals and her body adjusts to the injuries that left their mark and affect her daily. She is alive again, after being dead, but she will never be as healthy as she was before her fall. Her family knows that, even when she cannot remember who they are to her.

After settling into Ylissetol again, the world at peace, she still does not sleep alone. Lissa is her most frequent bedmate, their blonde hair tickling each other’s faces as Emmeryn holds her baby sister. “You’re really real,” Lissa will say, each time she wakes up, still half-asleep. Chrom sometimes drags himself in there, crawls to Emmeryn’s other side, Lissa dozing and gently snoring, and falls asleep with his back pressed to hers. As the weeks draw on, turn to months, Chrom and Lissa sleep in her bed less and less, and she is alone more and more.

It is her fourth week straight of waking by herself, in an empty, quiet room, when she remembers. (The holes in her memory have mostly resolved themselves, but still she sometimes is struck by something she’d forgotten, and she reels.)  _ Phila _ .  _ Frederick _ . Frederick she’s seen, smiles soft but gaze serious. She’d wondered what he was waiting for, what he was expecting from her. She believes she remembers now.

Emmeryn’s half out of bed, thin sheets tangled horribly around her ankles, when she pauses. She hasn’t seen Phila. She hasn’t...All this time, she hasn’t.  _ Phila _ …

She sits back down, and her fingers trail shapes in the sheets as she loses time to the view out the window. These sheets, that window, Phila’s phantom kisses along her neck and Frederick’s hands at her waist. She remembers, and she remembers where Phila is now. Or rather, where Phila is not. Emmeryn does not crawl back into bed, but she sits, and she thinks, and she remembers. 

After dinner, for which she’d finally left her chambers for, Emmeryn deliberately catches Frederick’s eyes. Holds them, shoulders set and her heart pounding. Nervous, but - have things changed? Will he come? (She cannot remember how much her siblings knew of her odd relationship with the Exalted line’s most trusted knights, she cannot remember what exactly she promised, or did not promise them. But she remembers what they did together, that they were together.) She hopes he will come. 

He knocks. Frederick slips in, quiet as he’s always been. It echoes with her memories of other entries, Phila was normally already there, warm behind her but still keeping her distance. Her lack is telling, but Frederick is still here, his tie left off and his first button left undone. 

Something about his severe expression keeps her from throwing herself at him, Frederick’s impassive stance...She holds herself apart, Phila’s ghost gently urging her forward. Urging her to speak. “Frederick,” She breathes, her new grief and her loneliness deepening her voice. Before these past few long weeks alone, before her fall, Emmeryn had always had one or the other to keep her company at night, to wake with her in the pre-dawn before she had to get started with her duties. For so long, she’d never had to be alone. Her siblings, her knights - she might spend her working hours in solitude, but the time that was her own...

She was alone now though, and Frederick had mourned both Emmeryn and Phila for long years, before Emmeryn had been brought back to them. Had he married? Was she cruel, to ask him here? (Memories of Phila, laying soft, teasing kisses along her shoulders as Frederick kissed Emmeryn’s face and neck, hands anchored in her hair and hips tilted up to meet hers. Cloth against cloth, and Phila was just helping, this time. Later, later would she have her turn.)

So she kept herself still, and she waited. Would he tell her no? Would he turn away, other duties and other people coming rightfully first? (She was selfish enough that she hoped even if he had married, he would give her some comfort. If he were married, she would not have all the things she desired, but she would have him, warm, at her back.)

“Milady,” Frederick answered softly, taking one, two three steps forward. “You remember?” And he knelt, as he had so many times. She nodded, wordless, because Phila should be there too, helping her pull Frederick up and forward. “Everything?” He asked, and she shook her head, haltingly. Not everything. She cannot recall every night they spent together, the three of them, or how far it went, or how long she meant for it to continue. (Her heart says forever, but there are aging files in her drawers that hint otherwise. Matches being considered for the good of Ylisse.) 

“Not too much” He said then, after a pause, offering her his hands. “Not too fast.” He says, gaining his feet as Emmeryn pulled him up and forward. “Milady-” Frederick says, frowning, cut off when Emmeryn brushes a kiss to each fingertip and seats herself in the middle of her bed. Breaths short and fast, nerves and excitement and memories of Phila’s fingers on her skin while Frederick made a show of repeating his vows. 

“Frederick, please.” She asks, and her heart might actually skip a beat, when he slowly, slowly joins her on the sheets. Inching forward until she is between his knees, looking up at him, Emmeryn hesitates. She doesn’t remember asking permission, before. She might not remember, but she knew she must’ve done it once. And now, having missed years of his life, she must ask again. (Phila’s breath on the shell of her ear, hand creeping down Emmeryn’s side, each lingering touch all the better for Frederick’s groans as she fidgets in his lap.)

“Can I?” She asks, searching his face for her answer. “Can you?” He holds his silence, but he does give her a nod. Her hands on his thighs, she wants so badly to slide them slowly up, and lean forward to kiss him, as though this is their first time together again and she is clumsy with eagerness. “Frederick,” she scolds. 

Emmeryn  _ needs _ his honesty. 

She pulls her hands away, and she waits. “Yes,” he says verbally. “I can.” It’s all she wants to hear and he’s said it, with all his customary forthrightness. Hands grip onto his hips, and she pushes herself up to make their lips meet. He’s warm, under her hands, and his own brace against her to temper her haste. He’s alive, he’s here, she’s not alone. She remembers Phila’s laughter, her quiet support, and Fred’s more vocal, more theatric addition to their dynamic. 

Haste pushes Emmeryn to abandon Frederick’s lips and kiss and nibble down his neck. For his own part, Frederick’s hands have moved slowly to just below her butt, and he boosts her up so that she straddles his lap and feels his excitement against her. “Milady Emmeryn,” he breathes, grip a little tighter than it probably needs to be. Her dress rides up to the point her thighs are on display, and while Emmeryn unbuttons Frederick’s shirt further he traces a hand gently along the skin there. 

She hums, tingles up her spine, and Emmeryn smiles against Frederick’s collar bone at the answering vibrations she can feel. Her grip on his shirt tightens as she presses closer, bust against his pectorals and shifting pleasurably over his erection. It’s not the same, she knows there should be a third set of hands involved, no matter that Frederick’s reactions to her attentions are exciting her in turn.

Her heart aches, and she purposefully rubs against him, face pressed to his chest. That gets her a a tilting of his hips, a groan, a tightening of his grip on her. If this were before, Phila would laugh, tease the both of them. The thought saps her excitement, and her grip tightens further on his shirt until her knuckles are white. She...misses their third so much, and she has only just remembered who she was missing. 

“Milady,” Frederick says, shifting away from her after Emmeryn had stopped for a while. “You don’t have to.” The hand on her face is gentle, though the calluses are rough. She leans into it, eyes close tight and struggling to keep her face from contorting. She just wants. She wants. “Emmeryn.” He continues, gently tugging one of her hands from his shirt to plant gentle kisses on her knuckles. 

“I am not going anywhere, Milady, I’ve sworn my fealty to you and yours.” More soft kisses, moving up past her wrist, though his other hand moved a thumb underneath her eye. Comforting, present. She opens her eyes and leans further into the touch. “For you and your exalted family I would scour the world and remove it’s dangers.” He says. “I have missed you more than the moon would miss the stars, if the sky went dark and the sun never rose!

“Milady, please.” 

Slowly, she releases her other hand’s grip on his shirt, and she rocks back so that she is supporting her own weight. Frederick kisses her hand once more, and leans forward to press equally gentle kisses to her forehead and lips. The tenderness and Phila’s lack finally gets to her, and Emmeryn wraps her arms around him and clings like that might hold him to her, forever.

“Do not leave me,” Emmeryn whispers. “Just, tonight, don’t leave.” She couldn’t bear it, being alone tonight. Not with all those intimate memories rattling around in her head like they were new. Not with that piece of her life so raw and empty, not with her so very aware of her losses. She cannot even bear to think of it. Emmeryn needed Frederick.

“Never.” Frederick swore, arms wrapping around her in return. “Never, Lady Emmeryn.” 

Phila is not warm in front of her, head pillowed on her arm and her eyes half lidded as she mouths “Good morning” as Emmeryn wakes up in the pre-dawn. The sheets there are cold, and Emmeryn’s fingers sweep over the empty space with something like reverent mourning. Frederick though, is warm behind her. One arm thrown over her and resting on her abdomen, head thrown back on the pillows. Familiar, comforting. She wakes up in the pre-dawn when Frederick stirs, puts some distance again between them with strengthening consciousness. 

“Good morning,” he murmurs, sure that she’s woken. He kisses the back of her neck and sits up to find his shirt somewhere on the floor. He has duties this morning still, and while she will likely spare her body the stress of wandering the halls without purpose just yet, she still sits up to watch him. He’s still as handsome as she remembers.

“Will you come back tonight?” She asks, tentative, but struggling to keep her tone neutral. She won’t order him, won’t abuse her station that way. If he comes back, after last night, it will be of his own will. The sheets have been pushed down to her knees, and her nightdress is bunched about her hips from the way she sits. She is still blurry-eyed and drowsy, but Frederick is bright-eyed and he smiles at her, fingers stilling over his buttons.

It’s a good smile, once she remembers as exuberant agreement. “I would be glad to, Lady Emmeryn!” He crosses the room to kiss her, still gentle, twice. “I have made my vows to you in the name of the Halidom and under the gaze of the divine dragons, and I will not break them.” Fervor softening, Frederick cups Emmeryn’s face.

“I swore to you forever, the first time you brought me into your rooms.” He promises. “If it is still your wishes, I will be here every night.” She kisses him fiercely, and then pushes him away.

“You have forgotten a few buttons, Sir Frederick.” There’s a memory of Phila, making a good showing of pretending to strangle Frederick with his tie, even as Emmeryn finishes braiding her hair. So she gestures for Frederick to come closer, and she does up the remainder with a nostalgic smile. Humming approval, she shoos Frederick towards the door. “Go on, your duties won’t wait.”

He bows, smiles, and strides out the door, ready to right every wrong. He’ll come back that night, sleep beside Emmeryn, and wake up together. This will repeat, and repeat, and repeat. It’s not how things should be, they’ll miss Phila forever, but they are both happy.


End file.
